John Carter & David Lynch's DUNE

Dejah Thoris, and Lynn Collins are the top search terms to this blog. Go figure?

What I am about to say, is meant as a compliment, Andrew Stanton‘s John Carter, is this generations David Lynch‘s DUNE. An imperfect adaption of a classic science fiction book finally realized for the cinema.

Like David Lynch’s DUNE, John Carter in its process began with another intended opening scene, as opposed to what we ended seeing on the big screen. Check this out, its good!

Now, in DUNE‘s case, the alternate opening was a long storyboard sequence which had been meant to help none Frank Herbert readers get to know the DUNE ‘Verse, that opening was replaced by the Princess Irulan filmbook narration, that many of us are familiar with. In the case of John Carter, the above opening with Princess Dejah Thoris simply got cut down,  reshot, and I think reordered in the final film. It looks to me, this call was made so as to jump right into an action sequence…

I would have kept this as the opening, it provides a more solid sense of Barsoom. I think. I’d love for it to be completed, or perhaps sliced down a bit and restored to a new cut of the film. Will that take place? Not bloody likely, because Disney screwed up.  I happen to think that John Carter has an honored place among such films as David Lynch’s DUNE, and Mike Hodge’s Flash Gordon – that is, not nearly as bad as their reputations claim, nor as deserving of the scorn some heap upon them.

John Carter is highly re-watchable! Certainly more so for me, than any of the Star Wars movies (old, or new…) or AVATAR – which has many, many story problems, yet it made tones of money, and will get sequels.

Related articles

• Putting the Kitsch in John Carter (lilywight.com)
• Sean Young’s video diaries take you behind-the-scenes on David Lynch’s Dune [Video] (io9.com)
• John Carter: An Epic Blast from the Past (bookblob.wordpress.com)
• John Carter (2012) (divxhunt.wordpress.com)
• ‘John Carter’: See the original opening scene criticized by Pixar’s brain trust – EXCLUSIVE VIDEO (insidemovies.ew.com)